Amazon "Unbox" Video Downloads Launched — Amazon has jut launched their video download service, consisting of both movies ($10 - $15/ea to purchase) and television shows ($2/ea). Purchased shows can be archived to DVD, but are not playable on set-top boxes.

Amazon Unbox goes live — Amazon's movie download site, called Unbox, appears to have gone live today. There's no link yet on the front page of Amazon, but the direct link at unbox.com works. We covered early previews of the site last month. Shows may be purchased or rented.

Reporters' records hacked in HP probe — update Two CNET News.com reporters' personal telephone records were accessed by a contractor hired by Hewlett-Packard to uncover the source of boardroom leaks to the media, according to the California attorney general's office.

FTC fines Xanga for violating kids' privacy — $1 million penalty against social networking site is largest under 1998 law — Xanga.com, a rival to the popular MySpace.com, allegedly permitted creation of 1.7 million accounts by users who submitted birthdays indicating they were under 13.

will facebook learn from its mistake? — As Fred Stutzman noted, Facebook Broke Its Culture this week. In an attempt to provide something that would make people's lives easier, they created a privacy trainwreck. Earlier this week, they unleashed a feature that notified all of your "friends" of EVERY update that you make.

SanDisk MP3 seizure order overturned — A seizure order that would have barred SanDisk from showing its MP3 devices at a German trade show was overturned this week, allowing the company to display its digital audio players after all. — A German prosecutor issued the seizure order for the MP3 players on Friday, Sept. 1.

Google's China Office unveiled-1 — A photo of Google China's new office building. Google's China Office moved into its permanent office building in Tsinghua Science Park, Beijing, on September 4 after temporarily operation out of Xinhua Insurance Mansion and Tsinghua Science Mansion.

Nokia to baptize phones by name rather than number — HELSINKI (Reuters) - Nokia (NOK1V.HE), the world's top handset maker, said on Thursday it will give new phone models a name rather than a number, following the success of rivals with model names like RAZR and "chocolate."

lonelygirl15 — Over the last week, i've gotten innumerable emails about lonelygirl15. Folks were wondering if i was behind it or if i knew who was. They wanted to know my opinion, if i thought it was fake. — I did. I thought it was fake but i expected that it was a TV or movie organization.

Such Were the Joys — How do I love thee, Vodafone 905SH? Let me count the ways. — The Vodafone 905SH — We're back from a summer in Japan, with fond memories of new friends, shopping bags full of cheap plastic Gundam action figures and several bottles of fine sake.

Battle-worn Xbox 360 Casemod — This Xbox looks like it's straight from the set of the nonexistent Fallout movie. Post-apocalyptic scratches, dings, and peeled paint make you feel like this Xbox 360 has seen more than just the inside of your home theatre cabinet.

Back up your phone contacts online with Zyb — Web site Zyb backs up and syncs your cell phone's contacts and calendar data so that you'll never have to go through the pain of manually entering in contacts on a new phone again. — As if that wasn't cool enough, it does more.

Clip: Dude gets fat air dirtbiking over Google — Normally we're not ones for corporate promotion, but it looks like Google put this dirtbike video on their home page a week back. Another user caught it in the wild. — Can't find any coverage or explanation of this stunt, but it beats the hell out of those holiday doodles.

In a Sea of Cellphones, a Pearl — EVERYONE knows that the perfect cellphone doesn't exist, and it's mostly because of physics. You know: You can't have a huge screen on a tiny phone, or a fat battery on a slim phone, or top-of-the-line construction at a rock-bottom price.

Live Documents is Powerful Stuff — A new service called Live Documents allows Windows PC users with Office already installed on their computer to syncronize documents across multiple users over the Internet. The service works currently with Word and Excel documents (other office applications are coming soon, they say) via a toolbar.